


Angels, Arise.

by wanderingheart (c_marie)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Love, M/M, Smoking, Wee bit of denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:35:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_marie/pseuds/wanderingheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A space to breathe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels, Arise.

 

_At the round earth's imagined corners, blow_

_Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise_

_From death, you numberless infinities_

_Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,_

_All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,_

_All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,_

_Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,_

_Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe._

_But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,_

_For, if above all these, my sins abound,_

_'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,_

_When we are there; here on this lowly ground,_

_Teach me how to repent; for that's as good_

_As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood._

 

\---

 

Eames imagines that they love Brighton, together. Mostly when it's raining and the beach is wet with haze, with scuttling, fearful crabs, wreathes of salty weeds, crackling-black packets of seaweed pods and coiled, eroded, sharp edges of conches and oysters and clams, where the iridescence curls out from under a wrinkled hood like a winking shard of glass, and the sand-rubbed pebbles are small and round, and piled into each other's cracks, safe and smooth-grey. The end of the ocean disappears into the sky like a flawless seam, because the rain smoothes out all the edges; it's rounded, the world. And the dock creaks, smelling like the wet, salt-encrusted wood of a grandfather, when they crouch under it, with their bare calves gritty with damp sand, with Arthur’s hair turned a darker black and plastered flat against his head; it sticks to his cheeks. Edges curling slightly. 

 

They crouch against the rock-face wall, lichen yellow-green and crisp against their backs, mist sucking the clarity from the air, water dripping, viscous, from the separated planks above their heads. (Arthur is quiet and has dark, violet bruises under his eyes. Eames watches him scratch a long scab on his wrist.) 

 

He lights a match against a post; it almost hisses out, in the rain. The smoke from Eames’ cigarette is washed from his skin and his lips and everything that is left tastes of salt. Arthur shifts and his shoulder presses against Eames’ side; his shirt is white and damply translucent, and Eames can see Arthur’s ribs in the places where it clings to the skin. He exhales and imagines he can see his own fingerprints, there, too. Arthur reaches for the cigarette, the damp skin of his forearm brushes Eames’ elbow, wrist. And Eames lets him take it, because it's beautiful to see his lips on it, the white crook of a wrist and the thin fingers, and smoke curling against his tongue. It's better than Arthur’s mouth under his own, like this, better than the pale triangle of damp skin at Arthur’s neck when his head is bent; this is the greatest intimacy. 

 

Eames stands (and the whitewashed, hollow bones of a bird crunch under his heel). They curl their fingers together, locked and loose and easier than holding hands, and they scrape the sand from their skin, and the stairs up are rough under their feet. 

 

Eames catalogues this as 'our place'. 

 

\---

 

_Hello._

 

_They never give you enough space, here. I'm sorry if I run out. But I don't suppose it matters, I never know where to start. I could tell you what I did today: I bought the paper for this, and a box of peppermints, and a pair of gloves, because it snowed. I walked along the river, the long way back, to test them out, the gloves I mean. The snow tastes different here, even when you tip your head back all the way – 'like you're supposed to'. It just doesn't work here, I suppose. I hadn't any money left, so I went back to the inn and waited and had something to eat, and did what I had to do, what I came for, and waited some more. It felt like the time on a train platform. Isn't it odd how you spend most of your life anticipating a moment? Isn't it like that? Isn't there anywhere where it stretches on?_

 

_Sorry. I don't think this will ever work. I can never say enough._

 

_E._

_Dec. '11_

 

On the reverse, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, in spring. There is a woman with a red coat, her smile caught half-flash. ( _The edges are curled and yellow_.)

 

\---

 

Eames sits on the edge of the table. "More salt," he says, and gnaws on a thumbnail and smiles and Arthur swats him with the flat of the spoon. 

 

"You," says Arthur. "Walking coronary. No more comments from the peanut gallery."

 

"Cheese grating gallery."

 

"Doesn't redeem you in any way," says Arthur, and adds more salt, anyway. 

 

Eames tastes the sauce with an imperious little tilt of the head and a slight lean forward when Arthur offers the spoon (and his palms brush the pile of unopened letters, rich-red sealing wax crumbling on the wood, one is red). Eames smells like cloves and his sheets, and Arthur kisses him, hand on one knee, knees tight against Eames’ thighs, spoon dripping onto the curling linoleum.

 

They eat from the same plate (most of them are dirty anyway; the flat is falling apart at the seams, really, held together by spellotape in the corners and the round sand-smooth pebbles on the windowsill, above the sink). They don't clean up after themselves. 

 

 

\---

 

Eames’ flat is best for waking into. The bed is pushed against the window because there isn't any other room for it, they are pressed together and forced into sleep and contained, and there aren't enough shelves, so the books are carpeting, laid out in piles and stepping-stones and pillows, and when the windows are open the pages fan, silk-rustles. 

 

Arthur is laid boneless in his own sheets (he cringes when he dreams in strange places, which are strange only to him, and not always the same), and his back is painted with Venetian shadows, lashes like feathers and Eames spreads his fingers like wings against the scars over shoulder blades – cream and white lacing and bronze joins - and a pigeon coos on an iron rail. And they are angels of this moment ( _flotsam be damned_ , thinks Eames). 

 

He kisses the triangle of skin at the nape of Arthur’s neck, and holds his breath silent, for a moment, with the press of a palm. Still, shh. Still.

 

Eames catalogues this as 'love'.

 

\---

 

Eames borrows Arthur’s suitcase when he leaves, for a while. The train jostles and whistles and smells a little like soot and old cigarettes. There is a baby crying, somewhere, in the background, and he keeps the case on his lap, because he's found a postcard in the inside pocket. He doesn't ever remember seeing it before, but it's his, it's to him: because it's the way Arthur speaks when he thinks everyone else is asleep and Eames knows he's the only person in the world to ever hear that.

 

The loop of the _'l'_ says _I miss you,_ the curve on the tail of an _'e'_ is comfort and affection and a little bit of man's best friend (the spill of ink on the corner is like loneliness), the cross of a 't' is the hitch of breath when fingers are slick and mouths are softened red and damp with salt. 

 

 _Hello_ , says Eames, to the picture of the woman in the red coat. _Hello_ , say the penstrokes. _I'm sorry_. 

 

\---

 

Eames spreads his fingers over Arthur’s shoulder, carving him open, cupping an elbow, splaying a wrist to the carpet. Arthur’s hand curls in the pages of Whitman. Eames kissed the curve of the tilted jaw and Arthur whispers, unintelligible, like hazy rain, like silk leaves with printed words and looping 'l's. 

 

 

Eames mouths at Arthur’s neck, tongue slick and damp and the map of skin like the space under the shelves in a library. Arthur’s body is bare, laid open, taut and arching, soft places exposed for Eames to suck and nose and grip, hard enough to make Arthur open his eyes, blind. 

 

Eames scrapes his teeth at the inside of Arthur’s thigh, high up into the hidden places where he can leave reddened bruises, for him, for himself, for love (and flotsam be damned), where he can cup a knee and hook it over his shoulder and swirl a tongue, bite, here is indelibility. 

 

They kiss (and the page tears). 

 

\---

 

Arthur crumbles up the hours, into his coffee. They sit quiet there, melting into air, and he is breathing. Eames props his chin on his wrist, on the pillows, and closes his eyes. And here is love, in the corners. Protect me, thinks Eames, protect us, (you selfish bastard you smoke screen mother _fuck_ er,world, wealth, harm, illness, death, despair, mistrust, world, world), and don't ever let us go. Gently, don't ever let us go. 

 

\- fin -

 

**Author's Note:**

> Um, hello there! I hope you all enjoy this - it came out of nowhere really. I love to write but this was just unexpected and probably makes no sense and most definitely murders this fantastically beautiful couple, but I am taking a leap of faith and posting this. I do hope you all like it - maybe even love it <3
> 
> When writing this I totally picture them laying low, after a job gone kind of wrong, maybe. Yeah, uh that's it. Hope someone likes it!


End file.
